For those of you who read my first every Damerey series, Rey's Adventure's Post TRoS, welcome back to that world. I missed these guys!
Siblings
"What is going on here?" Rey demanded as she entered the room. After a busy morning, she had finally been able to sit down and work on the scheduling for the coming week. She hadn't gotten very far before the sound of her two youngest boys fighting in the next room had distracted her.
Skyler and Samuel were pummeling each other rather comedically, but stopped and looked up at her when she spoke, both looking rather guilty.
"Who started this?" Rey asked her two boys, looking around for their older sister, who was supposed to be with them.
"He hit back first!" Sam said, his little arms folded in front of him.
Somehow, Rey managed not to laugh. Three-year-old Samuel was as naughty as he was cute. He was too much like his father. She looked at six-year-old. "Skyler?" she said, eyebrows raised in expectation.
"I didn't mean to hit him!" Sky defended. "He was reaching for a brick just as I grabbed for another one. My hand hit his arm."
"Well, it doesn't matter how it started," Rey told them. "Neither of you should have hit back." She looked around again. "Where's your sister?"
The two boys shrugged, immediately going back to playing with the toy bricks on the floor in front of them. Typical, she thought. Overly dramatic one moment, then suddenly focused on something different the next.
Just like their father.
Shaking her head, she left the room and moved to the front door. She opened it, feeling the desert heat of Tatooine flow inside. For her, it wasn't a bad feeling. Despite griping about once again living on a hot, dry planet, Rey preferred it to cold winters on Kolbe, their previous home. She saw movement off to the right, by Finn's house, and lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. She could see the familiar form of her husband walking across the sands, heading for the workshop. He was being trailed by two smaller forms, his daughter and his droid.
She slipped back inside the house, content knowing Shaina was with her father. Rey hadn't seen the eight-year-old girl leave, but she had been distracted. She would talk with her daughter about not leaving without letting Rey know later. This desert was easy to get lost in, and while Shaina was already becoming comfortable with using the Force that came so easily to her, she was still a child.
Rey was about to sit down again when a soft whine came from the bedroom. Giving a soft sigh of her own, she stood and headed toward the cry. Baby Shiloh, not quite ten months old, was sitting up in her crib, looking flushed and confused. Rey knew the feeling; she felt that way after naps, too. As Shi raised her arms, asking to be picked up, the two boys ran into the room. They were fascinated with their little sister and were always asking to hold and play with her.
"Can Shiloh play with us, Mama?"
"She always tries to eat the bricks but we stop her."
Rey smiled at them as she picked the baby up. "Shiloh needs her diaper changed and then she needs to eat, then we'll see if she wants to play. Okay?"
"Okay," the boys said in tandem, then they turned back to the sitting room to continue with their play.
Once the baby was changed, Rey moved back to the kitchen to continue working while she nursed. Because she was so busy teaching, Rey weaned her babies off the breast when they were about three months old. They usually took to the bottle easily, as their father usually started feeding them that way when they were only a couple of weeks old, but Shiloh had been a little tougher to transition, and even now she made attempts to open Rey's shirt. Poe teased her about it, telling her that he, too, thought Rey's tits were irresistible.
As if her thought conjured him, Poe entered the front door, Shaina, BB8, and a wave of heat following him.
"Your daughter thinks I should rearrange the workshop," he said as he closed the door behind his entourage. "She thinks I did it wrong."
Rey smirked. "Your daughter left the house without telling me," Rey countered. "Her brothers started fighting because she wasn't there to keep the peace."
"Keeping the peace is boring!" Shaina griped as she sat next to her mother at the table. "And so are my brothers."
Rey snorted a laugh as Poe moved to the cooling chamber and pulled out some juice. He looked back at Rey, eyebrows raised in question, and Rey nodded. Poe proceeded to pour five glasses.
"Boys," Rey called out. "Come have some juice."
Sky and Sam came skipping in, sitting around the table as Poe distributed the drinks, then he sat down himself. For the short time it took them to drink it was mostly quiet, but all too soon the children started picking at each other again.
Rey looked at Poe, who was watching her. "Did you get the schedule done?" he asked.
Rey glanced at the kids, then back at him. "What do you think?"
"I think it's time for everyone to come out to the shop and help Shaina and I rearranged it," he said with a grin. He stood and reached for Shiloh, who had stopped nursing long ago and was watching her siblings curiously. The baby reached back for him with a smile. "Come on, guys! You, too, BB8!"
With a wink, Poe headed back out into the Tatooine heat with all four of their children.
The silence was deafening.
Smiling, Rey got to work on the schedule.
